“…you aren’t happy with the design and you want changes. It’s going to happen…”
–Sonic the Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler
The story of almost every passionate creative person revolves around how to create a content which is relatable, easy to consume and unique. In addition to that, the creators want to deliver their thought process through their content and expect it to be receipted by the audience in the same way. Sometimes, in that creative journey creators receive constructive feedback from the industry and audience and their zeal to create, drives them through the tunnel of transformation.
This Indian indie gaming studio QYJO founder Tejas Shirodkar has gone through the tunnel of transformation for their upcoming title Gamedev Beatdown. In conversation with us he shares that they have shown it to a lot of people and after receiving feedback they have made changes accordingly. As Shirodkar said , “earlier people who liked the narrative style of gaming they didn’t find it comfortable with quick action brawler gameplay. We have made major changes in the gameplay after getting feedback from the players which is quite risky move for us as it costs more time and money.”
Now the gameplay is much more relaxed and players could get time to think and strategise their gameplay. The game has rogue like game genre progression, earlier they were working into more milestone to milestone but the players couldn’t sense of what to do next. However, now, players will have rogue like progression with more procedurally generated graph, which will allow the players to choose their direction.
“This time the game has projects, nodes where one can either get challenges and harder battles or some freebees basically the progression is much more structured now you have a graph based roadmap where a player will be aware of the consequences,” he added.
After the changes the combat in the game is much more different with proper storyline, act structure, whereas earlier it was sandbox style game and players get bored very easily with the style of the game.
Giving a little spoiler to the players he has expressed to us that this time the game starts with the game jam where a player discover gaming as a viable career option , then the player plays the role of an employee of the company and do actions and faces consequences just like any big studios.
The game is divided into acts where a player plays a part of an employee, an indie developer by starting their own studio and at one point the player becomes the veteran with all the experiences.
“ In the game there are narratives deals with different situations you will face in your career or when making certain games . There is situation specific content as well as randomised procedually sequenced content that will make each replay a fresh experience,” he expressed.
In the game the main goal of the player will be to survive through various phases. The includes tasks which can put one down or up for eg not able to manage funds liquidity, might leads to studio shutdown.
They have also incorporated a lot of characters as well where earlier there was no choices for the players. They have also incorporated department heads which they are currently working on.
“The core essence of the game was to show how it feels like to be a game developer and the experience that they went through,”he said.
The game will open its earlier access only on Steam PC by the end of January then on iOS and other platforms. In the early access the player have to buy the game which will open the opportunity for the players to share real-time feedback . In the early access few parts of the game will be still under development and the studio is open for the feedback with which they will updatethe game before the final release. The studio is also looking forward for Xbox release as well in near future.